Vowel and consonant quantity in two Swiss German dialects and their corresponding varieties of Standard German: effects of region, age, and tempo.

Abstract

The diglossic situation in German-speaking Switzerland entails that both an Alemannic dialect and a Swiss standard variety of German are spoken. One phonological property of both Alemannic and Swiss Standard German (SSG) is contrastive quantity not only in vowels but also in consonants, namely lenis and fortis. This study aims to compare vowel and plosive closure durations as well as articulation rate (AR) between Alemannic and SSG in the varieties spoken in a rural area of the canton of Lucerne (LU) and an urban area of the canton of Zurich (ZH). In addition to the segment durations, an additional measure of vowel-to-vowel + consonant duration (V/(V + C)) ratios is calculated in order to account for possible compensation between vowel and closure durations. Stimuli consisted of words containing different vowel-consonant (VC) combinations. The main differences found are longer segment durations in Alemannic compared to SSG, three phonetic vowel categories in Alemannic that differ between LU and ZH, three stable V/(V + C) ratio categories, and three phonetic consonant categories lenis, fortis, and extrafortis in both Alemannic and SSG. Most importantly, younger ZH speakers produced overall shorter closure durations, calling into question a possible reduction of consonant categories due to a contact to German Standard German (GSG).